Epitaph
by Kiliflower
Summary: A drabble series focusing on the Third Quarter Quell and the eighteen victors who lost their lives. [15/18]
1. Otto

Otto McAllister was a man of few words.

During both of his Games, he answered the interview questions quickly and concisely. There was no need for excessive details or fabrications or gregariousness. And for the most part, he was good at being overlooked.

Unfortunately, Otto was also fond of the bottle and he tended to drink himself into the Capitol emergency rooms whenever he lost a tribute. He hadn't brought a single one home yet and it ruined him.

He drank himself into a vomiting mess the day of training because he was afraid, afraid of returning as the same shaking, outrageously terrified boy from the District 5 slums. So he blotted out the fear in favour of incoherency.

And despite the abuse his body had endured, Otto still had the speed that had made him Victor all those years ago and he ended up at the Cornucopia with the Girl on Fire.

For the first time in a long time, Otto wanted to speak. He went up to her to help, a spear in his hand should things go awry.

He got a trident in the chest for his trouble.


	2. Brax

Believe it or not, Brax Mullins was not always a joke.

His skin wasn't always yellow and pasty, he had curly brown hair, had a solid school record and developed strong muscles from helping his Papa haul old machine parts to the scrapyard back home. But then the Reaping came, and his name came out of the bowl, and at eighteen years old he climbed over the bodies of twenty three other children so he could get home.

And he didn't turn to morphling right away. He played his part, smiling and nodding and insisting how charmed and honoured he was to be wherever he happened to be. He relied on his father to stay grounded, his mother and sister to calm him when the nightmares proved too much, and his painting was a good distraction from the chaotic world he now lived in.

But when the time came for Brax to repay the sponsorship that helped him in the arena, he found a dealer recommended to him by a Capitol stylist and numbed himself from the world. He became a shell of his former self, and significantly more undesirable.

Even better, the sponsors left him alone. He considered this a success.

His old mentor, his friends, not even his family could tear him from the drug. In Brax's mind, he could be an addict or a slave and he chose the former.

It was the first time he realized that he had a choice.

And as the pedestals rose into the arena, this sense of liberation was stronger than ever. He had been off the morphling for days, and though the withdrawal shook his body and gnawed at his nerves, he thrust himself forward at the sound of the gong and swam to shore as fast as he could.

When he got there, he saw Otto fall and his eyes widened. _So they were really doing this. _

And suddenly, Brutus was there and his jaw was set and his eyes were on Katniss Everdeen and Brax threw himself forward with a bellow to stop him.

Brutus stumbled as the young man from District 6 collided with him. He corrected himself and in a flash of silver and scarlet Brax Mullins was dead.

His last thoughts weren't about morphling.


	3. Veni

Veni hates the sea, it's so deep and ominous and quiet. She had grown up in a place where the earth was dry and the heat was stifling and the sound of crickets never stopped, plus their deepest water was a small lake.

She looks around, seeing so many of her fellow victors stuck on their pedestals. Those far older than her, some fresher ones who's Games she watched with blank, unjudging eyes.

And she can't judge, because Veni has been killing her whole life.

She killed her first pig when she was seven years old under careful guidance from her Mama and then her brothers clapped her on the back and her Papa smiled and nodded approval. She wasn't allowed to move on to the bigger stock, like cows and deer, until she was older, much older. It was tough at first. After a while, it became second nature.

And then the Hunger Games came, and at seventeen she had to kill people instead. Her plan was to go through the motions and try to pretend that they were animals, to spare her conscience. But no matter how hard you try, it always comes back: animals aren't thirteen year old boys that piss themselves and beg for mercy, or sixteen year old girls that scream for your help as mutts tear them to pieces. The Games make sure you don't forget.

For months after, graffiti in District 10 and event posters in the Capitol branded Veni Morales 'The Butcher'. People muttered under their breath all the way to the Victor's Village, the only place where she could get peace and not face the contempt and disgust. For years after Veni's victory their tributes died in the Bloodbath at the hands of the Careers. Nobody _says_ so, but they all know why.

Veni arrives on the shoreline along with Cashmere, who's radiant and beautiful even when she's dripping with seawater. Veni wastes no time and springs for the supplies in the Cornucopia, thrilled to see her signature mace waiting for her.

Gloss waits for her too.


	4. Ryna

Ryna Witt has never felt like a Victor.

Even during the Quell, people give each other side glances when her name comes out of the reaping bowl. Eyes skip past her name on the betting boards. Many Capitol citizens ask who she is, and didn't a boy from Four win that year? Even Caesar Flickerman has to admit, it's hard to remember her, which is a bad sign – the statistics say she's only twenty six so she only won recently. Eh, no matter, we're moving on to _Veni _soon, how exciting!

It's not even similar to how Otto was so casually brushed off by the competition during his Games: they knew he was there; they just didn't bother with him until it was too late. Ryna is simply not memorable.

But lying beneath her plain, town girl appearance is a fierce guile. She listens, and watches and absorbs information. She knows why the strange people in the Capitol go after Finnick and Cashmere and Sequine and Odo and subsequently, how to avoid this herself. She watches everybody in training, noticing their strengths and what gets them frustrated. She knows how people work.

The only time she wishes she was more memorable is when Beetee ignores her. Yes, she's from the grain district and not from his home that's built on technology and genius, but Ryna could have a lot to contribute and tell him if he gave her the chance. She just wants a chance.

In the madness of the Bloodbath, Ryna grabs a knife and a pack and is about to dart into the jungle when she sees Beetee reaching for a coil of wire in the Cornucopia and a figure with a knife lurching up behind him. She screams his name to warn him and he turns and moves just in time so that he gets the brunt of the blade in the back instead of his neck.

As she turns to leave, Ryna meets Enobaria and her terrifying smile.

"Hello, District 9. Don't think I'd forget about you."


	5. Woof

Too old. That's what all the commentators and pundits and Games enthusiasts had said about Woof.

When he'd been reaped the first time, he'd been too young. Funny how things work out.

Now he can barely hear Cecelia's vain attempts to make strained conversation, his hands are too riddled with arthritis to even write with a pen. He was going to die soon anyway, he might as well do it in the arena.

"Mr. Dennis? Mr. Dennis!"

His stylists had tried to be polite, but only yelling at him worked. He stirred, absent minded, looking around him as he hobbled into the tube that would lift him into the arena, giving a good natured wave goodbye to his prep team.

The last time this happened, he was eighteen, burly and strong and a competitor. Now he was going in to save someone else's skin. A younger Woof would've laughed at the very idea, but time and being a mentor to dozens and dozens and dozens of dead kids hurts like hell and teaches you a lot.

Woof never got the chance to help Katniss.

Peeta was another story.

He had conflicted feelings towards the boy, because he'd killed his girl in the Games last year but he'd also put her out of her misery. She wasn't going to live after what the Two boy had done to her, but victors aren't meant to hold grudges. It's in bad taste.

As the other tributes – victors, friends – scrambled across each other in search for supplies and the like, they barely heeded Woof. It wasn't until a glint in Gloss Sinclair's eyes alerted Woof to the danger ahead, and as he ran past him Woof clung to his feet with his disease-mangled hands and refused to let go.

"What are you doing?!" Gloss cried.

Woof simply grunted.

"Let go, Woof, don't be stupid now."

Woof didn't say anything. Peeta had already disappeared into the jungle with the others.


	6. Seeder

Seeder can't believe her eyes.

Woof, in the throes of a heart attack in the sand, struggling for breath as Cecelia fought tooth and nail to get to him.

Ryna, the sweet young woman who always made Seeder green tea and shortcake – even if she didn't ask – and consistently tried to get to know her tributes on a personal level, lay wide-eyed and pale and unmoving on the beach.

Otto, Brax. Dead. Even Veni, the legendary victor from 10, was gone.

_We're supposed to be friends. _

So as her own personal form of defiance, Seeder – always so gentle yet hardy and unyielding as the trees of her home district, shows up on the shore and refuses to kill.

Brutus looks at her curiously.

"Really? You're not even going to try?"

Seeder gives him a contemptuous look. "Not this time."

Brutus shrugs and throws the spear at her heart.


	7. Sheeran

After the announcement was made, Sheeran had originally planned to claw and bite and worm his way out of the Quell.

Realistically, he had no chance at all. It was him against Odair, and the Twos, and the beautiful siblings from District 1 and the lovestruck duo of 12 from last year.

Yet as his wife – his girlfriend when he went into the arena the first time – locked herself upstairs and cried and screamed and just broke things to sedate her anger because _fuck _it wasn't fair, a glassy-eyed and iron-willed Sheeran was already strategizing.

He knew he was going to ignore the Cornucopia and then survive on his own for as long as he could. He was just as tough as he used to be and if anyone doubted that then it was their funeral.

Yes, Sheeran Sanders fully intended to survive the Quarter Quell. That was until after the reaping and his son, only four years old, asked him where he was going with questioning eyes and a quivering lip.

Sheeran and his wife exchanged looks and he told his child that he had a game to play in the city and he didn't know when he would be coming back but that he loved him very much and to be good and help his Mama.

It was on the train journey to the Capitol that Sheeran realized he couldn't allow himself to be a murderer as his toddler looked on. There would be no stealth survival, not in an all-victors arena and especially not in a Quell. He was a grown man and a father now, not a reckless teenager who put in extra hours on the fields of District 9 in order to avoid the community home. He was determined to be a better father than his own Da was.

The Games wouldn't change that.

So on the night of the interviews, before they all go on stage, Sheeran strides up to Brutus and Enobaria without a hint of shame and asks them that as a favour, during the bloodbath could they personally kill him in the noblest and least humiliating way possible.

They don't ask questions and oblige.


	8. Cecelia

She almost got away.

District 2 was carving up Sheeran, Cashmere was looting the already dead bodies and Gloss was circling the Cornucopia, making sure there were no stragglers to cut down.

Cecelia was street smart with enough nerve and fight in her to cause her hassle at the Bloodbath, but as she saw her district's first victor die in the sand she ran to Woof, _her _Woof, her mentor, punching his chest and shaking him as if it would bring him back.

"He's gone, Harte. The Games were too much for him."

Cecelia turned. Four Careers faced her.

And she thought of her children.

_Ezra, Violet, Evie. _Their faces and lives and smiles and dreams and words burst into Cecelia's mind.

The District 8 woman gritted her teeth and in a swift movement pulled the spear out of Seeder's chest and charged.

Of course, it was four against one – she had no chance.

But, a few hours later, as they healed their wounds with sponsor medicine, Gloss and Enobaria had to begrudgingly admit that she put up a damn good fight.


	9. Blight

Blight hates his name.

He was born the year of the terrible plague that spread like a cancer through the crops and the plants and the trees of District 7, poisoning the livelihood of so many, so many who starved to death, with empty bellies and jutting bones and rotting corpses.

And his mother, in the throes of childbirth, delirious with fever and hunger, had named him Blight. Why? Who knows? It didn't stop the other kids in school from beating him up, or throwing stones through the windows of his house, that's for certain.

And then he was a victor, and his name wasn't just death, but _he _was death too.

The Capitol is the only ones that love it. Every time he comes here, he sees 'BLIGHT DUNNE' name cards and jewellery and shirts and bracelets with his name on them. Sometimes they draw his Games on them too. That's worse.

He's walking with his unlikely group of allies from District 3 (and Johanna, though judging by her axe grip she's a moment away from murder) and he's hacking away through the undergrowth, just thinking how sick to _death _he is of, well… death.

And then Wiress gasps and screams and Johanna swears and Blight is drowning in blood as it pours from the heavens; hot, sticky, copious amounts of raining blood.

Blight turns and extends his arms, reaching for the others, stumbling blindly in their general direction.

He's a few feet away from them when he hits the forcefield.


	10. Mags

As she weaves her little baskets for herself and her allies, Mags mourns.

She mourns because she knows these people. Not as the show dogs that the Capitol have made them into, but as the actual people they are. Once were.

As the oldest in the arena, she's seen every single victor come through the arena and back out again. Their journeys, their struggles, their ups and downs. Even as their faces lit up the sky in the jungle, she still sees them as the kids they were.

Were.

Because she's seen the best and worst of them all, and they her; drank with them, laughed with them, screamed at them. But through it all, she always had some odd maternal connection, like she was with one of her own children (she'd never had kids, so her fellow killers would have to do).

And now she's here, eighty years old, barely understandable after the stroke that finalized her label as a tired, old news victor and she realizes that all she can do with her frail limbs and frayed nerves is give her kids a little more time to save Panem.

It's the message she leaves with a kiss on Finnick's cheek.


	11. Demelza

All of the tributes in the Quell have said at some point that they wished they'd died in the arena.

Demelza is the only one who meant it.

She was a target then, a rebel now, and were it not for the plan to save Katniss Everdeen and her fiancé, the boy with the golden curls, Demelza thinks she would've just followed her old mentor's example and hung herself once the Quell was announced. But she couldn't leave Brax alone. Not now.

District 6 won't have a victor this year. Brax's face was in the sky the first night and Demelza is a shell of a human, withered by drugs and self-harm and so incapable of resisting that she's just blending in with the jungle foliage and hoping nobody finds her.

The morphling withdrawals shook her body and she cried, tearing at her arms and elbows until they bled because they craved the substance, begged for it. But she couldn't provide it, so she sat in misery amongst the shadows and the leaves as the orange monkeys swung from tree to tree above her.

A group of people stumble into the clearing in front of her, and Demelza tenses. She sees the man with the trident, and the boy with the golden hair, and the girl on fire be set upon by the mutts. She tries to force herself to move but her joints are stiff and her body hurts and she can't, she _can't. _

It takes everything she has to haul herself from her small haven and leap in the way of the boy from 12. The mutt ravages her, tearing her apart while it still can before it's dead and Demelza is being slowly dragged away.

To the water. It's lukewarm and nice and slowly turning red with her blood.

The boy is kind, he knows colours and shades and Demelza wants to thank him but words are beyond her. She thinks he'd be a good father and the girl on fire is lucky and Demelza draws him a flower on his cheek with her blood, a bright crimson or scarlet or maybe it's just the light?

She looks up into the heavens and takes her last breath, hoping that the gods she worshipped before the Games aren't mad at her.


	12. Phoebe

Phoebe ignores the sound of the cannons. It's pointless, really, because if she somehow makes it to the end of this then all she'll have to do is pay heed to the anthem and the faces.

And she has. She knows who is left, and she runs over them in her mind again as she packs up her belongings, keeping an eye out to make sure nothing is creeping through the jungle around her.

There's the Capitol darlings from District 1, always sparkling and beaming and delightful and perfectly composed even as they leave hotel rooms and storage closets with mysterious strangers and lipstick on their necks.

Enobaria and Brutus are out there somewhere, all muscles and rage and adrenaline and Phoebe raises her hand to her cheek, remembering when Enobaria slapped her during her victory tour. She doesn't hold it against her. She was a new mentor, and Phoebe had killed her promising, popular tribute with a crude, twisted trap.

Beetee and Wiress, the latter of whom is one of Phoebe's closest friends. All she can say is she's glad the girl genius is alive and if Phoebe doesn't win she hopes Wiress does.

Finnick. Never spoke to him, never wanted to. She's just bitter and not too high and mighty to admit it.

Johanna. Bitch.

The ageing man from 10 who never introduced himself formally, but always held himself with a pride and a vigour that Phoebe couldn't help but admire.

Chaff, a surprisingly hearty man considering his lack of limb – he was foolish to refuse the prosthetic, but oh well.

And lastly, the loved up pair from last year. They stole the crown from under District 5's nose, and Phoebe holds some hidden resentment and with a toss of her hair the young victor decides it's better if they both die together and _in love_.

She's so caught up thinking about their cannons that she can't prepare herself for the tidal wave that causes her own.


	13. Wiress

Wiress thinks Johanna's perception of her mental stability is perfectly accurate.

She _is _nuts.

There's no denying it. She loses her cool when they replay her Games – every time. She sobs and thrashes about and screams for Beetee, Phoebe, Kine, anyone, please, why are they doing it, the girl on the screen isn't Wiress, she swears it, the person doing those things isn't her. They normally stick some morphling in her and she wakes up in a hotel room with Beetee at her side.

She doesn't know when she snapped, but it didn't take long. She was always a nervous, fidgety person, lurching around District 3 with a ducked head and an arched back. Boys didn't notice her and girls made fun of her behind her back.

Then she became very popular and all the girls wanted her autograph and the boys were asking her on dates and to be honest she just wanted it all to be the way it was before. She liked being invisible.

Now she spends her time helping Beetee and making gadgets. Wiress often writes to Phoebe, who is like a sister to her, and she so wishes she could've asked her to help save the Mockingjay but the girl is too stubborn and restless and self-involved for this kind of operation. The pair of them are complete opposites, and their friendship baffles Beetee to no end.

Wiress moves closer to the water, but hesitantly, humming a tune as she goes. Nothing stirs in the water as it did twenty years ago, crawling from the depths, snatching people up and –

No.

She sings louder and Johanna groans. She's singing Hickory Dickory Dock, she used to sing it all the time with her brother before the Games, and he has little children of his own now and they sing it too. She cleans the coiled wire Beetee gave her, knowing he trusts her, and she trusts him, and she hopes that the plan works and they can all –

Oh.

The steel runs across her throat and she doesn't sing anymore.


	14. Gloss

Gloss Sinclair dies trying to prove himself.

He's spent his entire life being a twin, and dressing in co-ordinating or identical colours, and never once did he get to feel like himself, like his own individual. It was always him and Cashmere. _Always_.

So when he emerged as the victor of The Hunger Games, bruised and bloody and barely alive, he spent almost a year in the spotlight and it was new and exciting and just so, so perfect. For once, it was Gloss and nobody else. It was his time.

Until Cashmere stepped forward at the reaping to volunteer, already outshining her brother who had been reaped. She shone and dazzled from the start, gliding and charming her way through the chariots and the interviews and even in the arena.

And then it was Gloss and Cashmere all over again.

So as the four of them crouch close to the beach, hidden from view, Brutus tries to organize their plan of attack and Gloss doesn't miss a beat and volunteers to go first.

He cuts Wiress' throat and falls to Katniss' arrow, furious that he lost to his sister _again_.


	15. Cashmere

When her brother dies, Cashmere has a change of heart.

She doesn't want to compete, or murder, or smile, or flirt, or make love, or be made love to, or speak. She doesn't want to live. Because her brother was the last person she had left and even though they fought tooth and nail to best one another in everything, she won't survive a world without him.

When she got back from the Games, covered in guts and pieces of bone and utterly catatonic, Gloss brought her back in time for her interview. She smiled all the way through it.

Gloss was the one who warned her about what happened to victors who had as many sponsors as she did. She had time to prepare herself, and even when she sobbed into his arms, feeling defiled and disgusting and used, she knew she had been afforded a luxury that others hadn't and wouldn't.

Cashmere hears her brother's cannon boom and she rushes Katniss, making quick eye contact with Johanna who has her axe in hand.

_Do it. _Her eyes plead.

Johanna frowns and throws.


End file.
